Main Menu

VSO - Sharing Skills, Changing Lives

M & J Dawson - Ghana

Maggie and John Dawson went to Ghana in September 2006. They’re working in education management and teacher training.

Why did we decide to volunteer? It’s hard to come up with a single motive. One was our desire for a change to the routine of our lives, and to spend a few years learning from what we hoped would be a completely different culture. Though this may sound a little cheesy, another motivation was the opportunity to redress (albeit slightly) the balance of advantages between the North and the South of which we’ve enjoyed far more than an equitable share.

We did of course have trepidations about the future. This was not a holiday; this was not a job change in the UK; this was not moving house. It was all of those at one stroke and a lot more besides. On the other hand, adventure and trepidation go hand in hand. And now we think we’ve comfortably adapted to the Ghanaian way of life – we certainly enjoy it. For a true impression as to how well we’ve adapted you’d need to ask our neighbours and colleagues. We’ll always be different. But I hope their impressions of us are as foreigners adding to the variety of their lives rather than disrupting it. On the more mundane aspects, the climate can be severe (dry really does mean dry, hot really does mean hot), the food is not always to our tastes and the mosquitoes are little b****s! But on balance the good aspects far outweigh the deprivations.

A bit about what we’re doing. John's role is in management support to the district education directorate. He works with the director of education, his front line assistant directors and the circuit supervisors (a bit like school inspectors) to address the issues of record keeping, school management, information analysis and some training. It’s all about capacity building. This description sounds very dull and at times it is, but overall the job is varied and learning the peculiarities of management in a different culture is great. I’m a teacher support officer and work with teachers, head teachers and circuit supervisors to support the Ghanaian initiative to improve literacy in English. I do this through workshops and in-class support of primary teachers.

If you’re thinking about volunteering, our advice would be to think carefully about what’s really important in your life. Friends and family are usually a given, but how important is a regular hot bath, or a night at the cinema, or a Friday night in the pub or an automatic washing machine? These things sound trivial but then two years is a long time. The advantages are less easy to list but the chance to learn skills in a different cultural setting and to travel to places of the world untouched by package holidays was irresistible to us and to many others we’ve met with VSO. If you can give up the home comforts for a year or two, the rewards can be immense.